iBasis CEO Predicts Explosive VoIP Growth in Southeast Europe at Financial Times Telecommunications Summit

Ofer Gneezy Cites Expected Four-Fold Increase in Regional VoIP Penetration; Highlights iBasis' 217 % Annual Growth in Regional Voice Traffic

ATHENS, GREECE-January 24, 2002-iBasis, Inc., (Nasdaq: IBAS), the leader in Internet-based voice communications, today announced that its president and CEO, Ofer Gneezy, has been invited to speak at the prestigious Financial Times Telecommunications Summit held here. In his address tomorrow, Mr. Gneezy will highlight the drivers of the predicted four-fold growth in regional Voice over IP (VoIP) traffic by 2006¹.

VoIP has been a key enabling technology in regional telecommunications growth due to its ability to improve service margins, cost effectively expand reach and provide competitive advantage - all without sacrificing the call quality which businesses and consumers are accustomed to experiencing with traditional telephone networks.

iBasis has led the VoIP charge in the region, growing its traffic in Southeastern Europe 217 % from Q3 2000 to Q3 2001. Through its carrier relationships, iBasis is able to provide service to several countries in the region including Bulgaria, Greece, and Slovenia.

iBasis has played a key role as an Internet telephony service provider in other high VoIP growth regions such as China and Latin America, where iBasis provides international Internet telephony services to major carriers, such as China Unicom, China Mobile, Telefonica, and Telecom Argentina.

In Europe, iBasis has also seen strong growth. Earlier this week, iBasis announced that it was expanding its relationship with Cable & Wireless, the 7^th largest carrier in the world. Building on its relationship with Cable & Wireless in the US, the parent company, Cable & Wireless (UK), has now interconnected with The iBasis Network in London, increasing the overall traffic capacity of iBasis' worldwide network interconnections with Cable & Wireless by 55%.

"We have finally moved past the question `if or when?' VoIP will become a mainstream telecommunications service and have now decisively moved into a discussion of `how fast?'," said Ofer Gneezy, president and CEO of iBasis. "Industry analysts agree that in the next few years the acquisition of VoIP equipment will surpass traditional telephony equipment. The benefits of outsourcing international voice traffic to Internet telephony providers like iBasis have become increasingly clear to the world's Tier 1 carriers, who generate more than half of our global voice traffic. Our vision, which has never wavered, is that VoIP is the future of international voice services and the growth and strong demand for VoIP we are seeing across Europe continues to validate our view of Internet-based telecommunications transport."

Mr. Gneezy will deliver his presentation at the Financial Times telecommunications conference on Friday, January 25, 2002 at 12:15 pm, at the Athenaeum Intercontinental Hotel in Athens, Greece.

iBasis in Europe
iBasis' strong presence in Southeast Europe builds on already impressive growth in Europe overall. With more than 19 major European carrier customers, iBasis revenues from European voice traffic nearly quadrupled from Q3 2000 to Q3 2001 and represented about 36% of the company's revenues at the end of that period. According to industry analyst publication TeleGeography 2002, Europe has experienced the strongest international traffic growth of any region outside North America, and represented about 43% of all international traffic in 2000 (the latest year for which statistics are available).

Much of the growing demand for iBasis international VoIP services in Europe, as in other regions, has come from Tier 1 carriers, such as Cable & Wireless. Tier 1 carriers are the world's largest and most demanding service providers. More than 50% of all voice traffic carried by The iBasis Network is generated by Tier 1 carriers.

iBasis and the Move to VoIP
While the international voice services market is expected to be worth more than $70 billion, for most large carriers, international service is not core, and generally represents about 5% of revenues. At the same time, the cost of maintaining global service operations is disproportionately high. Outsourcing international traffic to iBasis offers service providers a powerful competitive advantage by lowering the cost of transport and reducing overall global infrastructure and service support requirements.

According to industry analyst firm TeleGeography, VoIP transport is expected to account for approximately 6% of all international voice traffic in 2001, double the approximately 3% it comprised in 2000. As international voice traffic continues to grow, decreasing sales of traditional circuit-switching equipment and a predicted tripling of VoIP gateway equipment sales² over the next five years offers further evidence that the fundamental shift to VoIP is well underway.

About iBasis
Founded in 1996, iBasis (Nasdaq: IBAS) is the leader in advanced Internet-based voice communications. iBasis delivers toll quality international voice services and provides the infrastructure for hosted communications solutions, including messaging and speech-enabled content, e-commerce and customer service applications. The company's customers include many of the largest enterprises and carriers in the world, including AT&T, Cable & Wireless, China Mobile, China Unicom, Concert, ExxonMobil, Gannett, H&R Block, Home Shopping Network, Morgan Stanley, NTT, Telefonica, Telenor, Telstra, Sabre Group, Sprint, Western Union, WorldCom, and Verizon. iBasis' hosted, enhanced service solutions include SpeechPortTM, a scalable, customizable ASP environment for speech-enabled business solutions, VoCore^SM messaging and the IP CallCardTM pre- and post-paid calling card platform. The iBasis Network is the world's largest international Cisco Powered Network for Internet Telephony. iBasis is listed in both the Russell 2000® and Russell 3000® Indexes. The company can be reached at its worldwide headquarters in Burlington, Massachusetts, USA at 781-505-7500 or on the Internet at www.ibasis.com .

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Assured Quality Routing and iBasis are registered marks, VoCore is a service mark, The iBasis Network, Internet Central Office, Internet Branch Office, IP CallCard, SpeechPort, IPort, and PriceInteractive are trademarks of iBasis, Inc. or its subsidiaries. Cisco and Cisco Powered Network are registered trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Except for historical information, all of the expectations, projections and assumptions contained in the foregoing press release, including those relating to the company's current expectations regarding revenue growth, sources of revenue, margin improvement and future capital expenditures constitute forward-looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and involve risks and uncertainties. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, (i) the extent of adoption of the company's voice-based Internet services and the timing and amount of revenue generated by these services; (ii) fluctuations in the market for and pricing of VoIP services; and (iii) the other considerations described as "Risk Factors" in iBasis' Annual Report on Form 10-K for its fiscal year ended December 31, 2000, and the company's other SEC filings.